


Outro 1982

by evieeden



Series: Outro 'Verse [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Awesome Peggy Carter, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22638061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: The Winter Soldier has been recovered, but Bucky Barnes isn't quite home yet.Especially when SHIELD have one last mission for him.(Or how the Winter Soldier met Tony Stark.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Howard Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peggy Carter, James "Bucky" Barnes & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Outro 'Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628461
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. There is a house built out of stone

**Author's Note:**

> Way back when, when I originally planned Outro in my head, I had all these side stories and plot lines that never made it into my original story, due to timing and not fitting into a linear story. So I started writing them with an aim to write a short sequel and it's taken a year to finally get my act together. 
> 
> So here's one of those side stories - how Bucky Barnes met Tony Stark pre-Outro. Or, because I was feeling the Wonder Woman vibes when I came up with a working title: Outro 1982.
> 
> Thanks for reading and I really hope you enjoy the story.

The Soldier waited.

There was nothing else to do in this cell. He supposed he should be grateful that he hadn’t been put into cryofreeze again, but the woman, the one who said she knew him, had told him that would never happen to him again. It was a nice sentiment for a lie, because it had to be a lie.

Still, there was something about her that made him want to listen to her even though she looked…familiar but in an unfamiliar way.

The other people on this base didn’t want to talk to him, not that the people on his last base had either, but the ones before had lorded over him, ignored him, talked about him like he wasn’t in the road with them. The people here didn’t ignore him. They watched him, studied him.

They were afraid of him.

It was plain to see. Oh, they pretended not to be, but the look in their eyes, the way they automatically reached for their guns whenever he moved a fraction. He didn’t understand why they didn’t just lock him away and throw away the key or put a bullet in his head if they were that terrified.

But they didn’t.

They didn’t wipe him either.

Maybe that was his punishment for not doing a good job, for not following his handlers’ advice and setting off a trap that had brought this new set of masters running.

He just sat here, flashes and blurs of colour and senses assaulting his brain, while this new organization, SHIELD, they said they were called, decided what to do with him. So far their policy seemed to be to just leave him alone apart from the two hours a day where they removed him from his cell (in heavy-duty handcuffs following the incident where one agent had gone to hit him for not cooperating and he had torn the man into pieces, literally almost ripping an arm off) and questioned him about Hydra.

Apparently that was who he had been working for.

The Soldier wasn’t sure for certain. All he knew were the endless cold of the laboratories and cryofreeze and missions that he was told he had completed but couldn’t remember.

There was a lot he couldn’t remember.

From the nightmares he’d been having – flashes of blood, and bright blue light, and pain – he was sure there was a lot more he didn’t _want_ to remember.

There was one name that they always used though that gave him headaches, like a burning fuse in the moments before the explosion went off.

_Steve._

Not always _Steve_ though. Only the woman used the name _Steve_. Everyone else said _Captain Rogers_ or _Captain America_. They set off smaller sparks in his brain, but not as much as the name _Steve_.

When the woman came, when she spoke to him, _that_ was the name she used. _Steve_.

She said it like it was supposed to mean something. He guessed from the burning inside his brain that it probably had once upon a time.

She was called Peggy. That was her name. She had told him to call her that. “Call me Peggy,” she had said, even though the man introducing her had given her name as Director Carter.

 _Peggy_. His mouth had formed the name, even though his voice didn’t. She was Peggy and he was…

Soldat. He was Soldat.

Except she didn’t call him that. She called him James. _James_. Like he was a real person. Maybe he was. Maybe that was the next mission, to be someone called James.

No-one else called him James. Just like no-one else said the name Steve.

Only the woman. He thought perhaps she was the key to this. Maybe she was his new handler.

Whatever the case, he sat and he waited and eventually he would be given a mission. Or be shot in the brain. He supposed he should have a preference about which, but preference had never come into it. There was pain and there was the mission and there was oblivion.

Until then, he would wait.

He sat. He waited. He ate and drank what was put in front of him. He stared blankly at the men who asked him questions. He tried to punch through the chest of the man in the white coat who tried to take a sample of his blood. He waited to be put down. He waited in vain.

The woman came in after that time. He thought she was there to kill him or beat him or put him in the chair. Instead she sat next to him on the cot he slept on and put her hand on his arm. The flesh one.

“I’m sorry, James. That won’t happen again.”

He was confused. None of his protocols had prepared him for this.

“Why not?” It was the first time he had spoken since arriving beyond stating that he was ready to comply. He had learned fairly early on that SHIELD didn’t want to hear him say that, or at least, the woman didn’t.

“Because I know you don’t like people touching you unexpectedly…especially scientists.”

It was like once he’d started talking, he couldn’t help but speak again.

“Why do you know that?”

The woman frowned at him, her hand squeezing his arm lightly. It was a small gesture that had no tactical advantage. But it felt…familiar…maybe? Like, maybe he had experienced this gesture before.

“Because you’ve never liked it,” the woman – _Peggy_ – replied. “Not in all the time I’ve known you.”

That implied that she had known him before. But of course that meant very little. There was nothing left of anyone in his head; the chair had seen to that. Except, that one name – _Steve_. That meant something, although he didn’t know what.

“You knew me?”

She smiled, a pale watery thing that didn’t meet her eyes.

“I did. I’ve known you for nearly forty years now, James.”

He frowned, his mind trying to make sense of everything he had been told, the little he could remember. “Not with Hydra.”

That was who had controlled him before, they told him. The ones who had sent him on missions.

“No.” She shook her head. “Not with Hydra. I knew you from before.”

Before.

That was a curious idea. That there had been a before. A time before the missions, before the pain, before the chair. There had been a before for him, and this woman had been a part of it.

“We were… friends?” Was that the right word for it? There were handlers and team leaders and soldiers and mission support. But that was on missions, not… before.

He had heard the word friends before. He knew it, although he couldn’t have told you what it meant or what it felt like. He just remembered one of the soldiers who helped transport him back to SHIELD had asked if he and Carter were friends the same way that Carter and Rogers had been ‘ _just friends’_. He didn’t understand the tone the man’s voice had taken, just that he didn’t like it. He wasn’t the only one – one of the other agents had punched the soldier in the gut for his words, although the Soldier didn’t understand why he had taken offence.

The woman’s voice was calm but firm with conviction. “We were. Not always at first, but later, before you were taken, we were friends.” She swallowed heavily and squeezed his arm again. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to find you.” She blinked watery eyes at him.

He didn’t know how to respond or why she was apologising to him. He was a weapon. You didn’t have to apologise to weapons. Anytime he upset someone in the past, he was just taken to the chair.

Carefully, oh so carefully, he raised his arm, the one she didn’t have a grip on and placed it over her hand. She seemed to hold her breath and he unconsciously mirrored her. He could feel warmth under the sensors of the plates on his hand, her heartbeat thrumming quickly underneath her skin.

Fragile. So fragile.

The intercom to his cell flicked on with a hiss, but no voice rang out into the room, just the static.

Moving so slowly, so he didn’t break anything, the Soldier gently squeezed the woman’s hand, trying to mimic the same action she had used.

She sobbed and he yanked both hands back from her, retreating to the corner of the cell, hunched in on himself.

“No!” she shouted, reaching out towards him.

It was too late though. He had malfunctioned. He had caused this distressed response.

So he crouched in the corner, hair falling in front of his face, shielding his face from sight, as the woman brushed tears impatiently from her face.

She tried to coax him back next to her, but he stayed where he was. He had harmed her, caused distress, he just now needed to await punishment.

It never came.

Eventually the woman left, leaving him confused and disoriented.

Perhaps punishment would come later or perhaps she wouldn’t be the one to enforce it. What was it one of the agents had called her – Director Carter, that was it. A Director wouldn’t need to mete out their own judgement, they would have others for that.

But it never came.

And eventually, days later, he managed to leave the corner. In some ways, he thought, cryo would have been easier. In other ways, he didn’t know why he should be able to have thoughts about what should happen to him. It had been too long without a wipe, that was it. If only he’d been wiped, everything would become clearer.

But he wasn’t wiped and he wasn’t punished.

And the woman – Peggy, her name was beginning to feel more familiar in his head – kept visiting.

Sometimes they sat quietly together holding hands; sometimes she told him about the time when they were friends. He liked the silence better. Thinking about the past made his skull feel like it was buzzing out of his skin.

No. Quiet was better.

Quiet helped him be calm and think. Quiet meant that no-one was expecting him to go out and fight. He thought sometimes that despite everything, despite being a soldier, that he didn’t like fighting; he didn’t want to fight.

But that was one of the few things he was truly good at.

His handler’s words reverberated in his skull sometimes: “You were made to shape the century.”

He didn’t want to though.

He wanted to sit and be quiet and have the woman hold his hand and to not have to fight.

That was what he wanted, if he was allowed a choice. He wasn’t allowed a choice, but if he was, that would be what he chose.

The Soldier would choose to go somewhere quiet, uninhabited, where there was no chance of ever having to fight or hurt someone again. He could sit quietly. He could roam the countryside. He could be self-sufficient – grow his own food. He could lock himself away for days at a time and not have to talk to anyone unless he wanted to. And he wouldn’t want to. He wouldn’t want to hear any sound apart from the wind again. Perhaps birds too. He couldn’t remember if he had ever heard birds before, but he had completed many missions requiring long-distance eliminations with hours sat still in one position before, so he imagined that he must have. No talking though, no other people, no awkward questions. Just him, existing in the quiet, and never having to fight again.

Yes, that would be what he chose.

However, what he wanted and what he got were often two different things entirely. After all, there was always a fight.

The only thing that was different was who commanded him. Who sent him into the fight. What the mission was. That part never really changed.

And even when he tried his best to avoid the fight; tried to stay quiet...

Well, the fight would always come to him.


	2. Wooden floors, walls and window sills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been re-watching Marvel and was in a writing mood. So here's the second chapter of this fic, where the Soldier gets a mission.  
> Apologies for any mistakes. This is unbetad so they're all my own.

There was shouting coming from outside his cell heading towards him. The soldier blinked and then rolled off the cot from where he was dozing lightly and moved silently to the corner of the cell behind the door. It was the closest you could get to a blind spot in the room as possible for a prison.

As he moved, the shouting resolved itself into three voices – Agent Carter (Peggy, she wanted him to call her Peggy) and two unknown men. One of them sent echoes through his brain.

Memories. That was what one of the scientists called them. The echoes were memories.

The memories left him uneasy.

“No!”

He must have blinked out for a few seconds because Peggy’s shout now came from right outside his door.

The Soldier, clenched his fists, metal arm whirring, as he readied himself for attack.

“No! You’re going to leave him in peace. He doesn’t need this.”

Distress leaked through Peggy’s voice and the Soldier readied himself to defend her. He had to defend her. She was Steve’s… She was important.

“He’s the only one who can do this, Peg! He has to do this!”

“Maybe, we should listen to Agent Carter, Sir.” The second man’s voice was more controlled than the first’s. Calmer, more deferential. “If she says that Sergeant Barnes is not able to-”

“He needs to!” the first man interrupted. Abrupt, impatient. The echoes told him that this was nothing new. The first man always sounded like this. “If we wait any longer…”

The man didn’t finish the sentence.

There was muttered hissing coming from the other side of the door, too low for the Soldier to make out, especially through the thickness of the walls.

Finally, Peggy raised her voice high enough again for him to hear her properly. “I talk to him first. And if he says no…”

“Peg…”

“If he says no, then that’s a no. I won’t have him compromise himself for you, Howard.”

Howard. He knew that name. Howard.

Gun oil and loud music. Whisky and welding. A strong feeling of camaraderie and…despair.

The door swung open, to reveal Peggy and the two men.

She flinched as she caught sight of him, battle-ready, prepared for attack.

“James, it’s all right.”

He ignored her right in front of him. She was about the only person in the world, he didn’t currently class as a threat. Instead he fixed his gaze on the two men behind her.

The taller one he didn’t recognise. He was stood a little way back from the others and seemed reluctant to get closer.

The shorter one…

Howard. This must be Howard. The voice he recognised, the echoes in his head…

The Soldier didn’t think he’d ever seen him look like this though.

The man looked ravaged. His hair was askew, eyes red, clothes rumpled and he didn’t look like he had slept in weeks.

“You.” He pointed at the Soldier. “You. You can help me.”

“Howard!” Peggy’s sharp remand stopped the man, but the Soldier could see the desperation behind his eyes. He couldn’t look away. “Sit down!”

The taller man moved to follow Peggy’s orders, pushing Howard down to sit on the Soldier’s cot before sitting next to him.

“Tell him…” Howard kept talking. “Tell him what he has to…”

“Howard!” This time it was gentler, but still a warning.

The Soldier backed into the corner as Peggy shut the door behind her, glancing out into the hallway to make sure no-one was watching.

Once she was sure it was secure, she turned her back to the door so she could face him.

The Soldier cocked his head curiously, not taking his eyes off the two men on the cot.

Peggy sighed and ran a hand over her face.

“Well,” she started, “I suppose I should introduce you all.” She shot a glare at Howard who had immediately begun to protest. “Sergeant James Barnes, this is Howard Stark and his personal assistant, Mr Jarvis. Howard was involved with the Howling Commandos squad during the war and you and he knew each other.”

The Soldier nodded. He didn’t know about the Howling Commandos, but he vaguely remembered Peggy telling him about them when she talked about Steve. The echoes had already told him that he and Stark were known to each other.

“Weapons,” he remarked.

Peggy stilled then nodded quickly. “That’s right. Howard developed the weapons you used in battle.”

The Soldier blinked, rifling through the echoes. “Colt handgun. Thompson submachine. M1941 Johnson, custom scope. Shot straight, unlike the Thompson.”

“That’s right.” Howard looked almost manic now. “A custom Johnson. You were the best sniper I’d ever seen. Barely needed the scope. Think of what you could do back then. Think of what you could do now with today’s weaponry.”

“Howard!” “Mr Stark.”

The warnings came from both sides.

The Soldier considered the man, his appearance, Peggy’s uneasiness.

“What’s the fight?”

They all froze, as if they hadn’t expected him to cotton on to their motives so quickly. The Soldier vaguely recognised that their surprise would have been something he found amusing once upon a time.

“Fight?” Mr Jarvis looked about ready to be sick.

“You want me to fight, yes?” he directed his question towards Howard. “To complete a mission.”

The zealous light had re-entered the man’s eyes. “Yes, I have a mission for you. I’ll give you anything for it. Money…you want money? I can get you money. Or weapons or…”

“You can say no, James,” Peggy intervened quickly. “You are under no obligation to say yes. We’re going to ask you, because we can’t yet see another way, but if you do say no then we _will_ find another way.”

It was a warning, but it wasn’t to him.

“What’s the mission?”

The other three exchanged glances. To the soldier’s surprise it was Peggy who answered.

“Howard’s son is missing – kidnapped – I should say. He’s been gone for three weeks and we’re no closer to finding him than we were at the start. Howard thinks…we all think…you may be able to track him, based on what you’ve told me about your abilities and what Hydra…” Her voice trailed off.

The Soldier blinked. “The story I told you, about tracking the girl from Prague to Sicily, that’s why you want me to help.”

“I… yes.”

“You told him about that?” He wasn’t angry with Peggy, just curious about what she had shared with others.

“Howard is… Howard runs SHIELD with me,” she explained. “He helped us track and recover you once we found out that…” You were alive. It went unsaid. He heard it anyway.

Heard the obligation. Not that Peggy tried to make it sound like one. Strangely, despite everything, the Soldier was sure that she wasn’t lying when she said that he was allowed to say no to the mission.

“Your son?”

“Tony.”

“Tony,” – Italian maybe, immigrants prior to the war in the family – “he’s important to you.”

Peggy looked as if she were about to start crying. The Soldier wondered if it was being around him that always made her cry. She didn’t seem like the type otherwise. “He’s my godson. Howard’s only son.” She wrung her hands together.

Howard’s face had turned ashy once more. “My boy… You have to find him. You _have_ to!” Howard looked like he wanted to start shaking the Soldier at any moment. Mr Jarvis put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“You want the boy tracked?” he clarified. “And…returned?”

“Of course I want him returned!”

“The girl in Sicily wasn’t returned.”

Silence fell.

Strangely, it was the unknown man, Mr Jarvis, who rallied first. “Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea, Sir.” He stood up and hauled Howard to his feet. “Sergeant Barnes is still recovering from his ordeal and we are clearly…”

“Do you have a picture?” the Soldier asked.

“A picture?”

“Of the boy.”

Howard jumped up, scrambling in his pocket before handing a photo over. It was a family portrait, the kind you had to get a professional to take. Howard stood at the back, imposing, looming over the rest of his family, one hand possessively on the shoulders of the other two family members. A blond woman – his wife, the Soldier guessed – sat in front of him, hands crossed neatly on her lap, twinset immaculate. She looked nice, he thought, respectable, like she came from money.

The boy was stood next to his seated mother and in front of his father. He had inherited his father’s colouring and the Soldier could have sworn he recognise the look of defiance on his face.

“That’s Tony. He’s nearly twelve now, I guess. He’s my boy, my only child. Myself and Maria had him later in life. He’s real smart though. Smarter than most adults. And the things he can do with robotics…” Howard smiled like robotics were a good thing. Like the last person who the Soldier had come into contact with who liked robotics, hadn’t cut his left arm off after a failed mission and shoulder injury, just because he could.

The fingers holding the photo tensed, creasing the corner of the image.

Luckily for him, Peggy was better attuned to his moods than he was.

“Howard, can you give us a minute please?” It wasn’t a question.

Howard still protested though. “Anything!” he begged as Mr Jarvis swept him out of the room. “I’ll give you anything. Anything you want if you find him. Anything!” he shouted.

The door slammed shut behind him. The Soldier kept his eyes on the photo, staring at the missing boy. Left with just Peggy in the room, he could feel the brain of his brain that needed to be alert around the strangers relaxing.

“James.” She waited for him to answer her, but he was entranced by the photo of the small skinny boy. They were nothing alike of course, this boy and the other one, the one from his echoes, small and skinny and fair. But the look. The look on their faces. The stubbornness to the jaw that couldn’t be hidden. He used to know a small boy like this. Used to protect a small boy like this.

“James.” This time Peggy’s voice registered. She sounded tired, he thought. Tired and worn in a way, he’d never heard before.

No. That was wrong too.

The echoes told him that he had heard her sound exactly like this before, once upon a time.

“Whiskey,” he muttered.

Peggy’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Whiskey,” the Soldier repeated. “You sound like whiskey and loss.”

He thought he’d said something wrong to start off with, but then Peggy laughed bitterly. “Yes, I imagine I probably do.” She swallowed heavily. “Come sit with me for a moment, James.” She reached out and took his hand, leading him over to sit on the cot next to each other. He noted that their position mirrored the one the two men had taken not three minutes before.

She squeezed his hand to get his attention, but his focus was still drawn to the small boy in the photo.

“We know loss too well in this business, James. Steve was the first and the…” She stopped, choked on her words. “But he wasn’t the last.”

Her grip on his hand tightened and he finally tore his gaze from the photo back to her. She wasn’t looking at him anymore though, instead staring across the cell at the blank wall opposite, ghosts in front of her eyes. He couldn’t blame her; he saw them too.

“As director of SHIELD, sometimes you have to weigh up the cost of saving someone. There shouldn’t be a cost, but there is. People, good people, go under because it’s them or the world and it’s…”

“…It’s always got to be the world,” he finished for her.

Peggy nodded.

The Soldier thought about what she was saying. The boy, no matter how rich or influential his father, wasn’t worth the world. Not to the world as a whole anyway, probably not to an organisation with as much influence as SHIELD. But he was worth someone’s world. Howard’s. Peggy’s too, from the fact that she was even down here speaking to him about it. There was a niggle in the back of his head though. Something that didn’t ring quite right.

“You… you came for me,” he began hesitantly. “You fought for me, took me from Hydra.” He wouldn’t say that he had been saved yet, because he still wasn’t sure if that was even an option. “I wasn’t worth…”

“Don’t say that!” Peggy interrupted him fiercely. “You were. You are.” She sighed heavily. “That’s why I didn’t want to ask this of you.” She stared at him determinedly. “I won’t allow you to be compromised now that you’ve been recovered.”

The Soldier thought about what she was saying, and what she was not saying. “But you can’t see any other way?”

“We’ve exhausted all our other avenues,” she explained delicately. “And even for Howard there are limitations about what he can do.”

The Soldier frowned, something ringing wrong in what she was telling him. “If Howard can’t track him, with SHIELD’s resources then surely that means there’s someone on the inside involved.”

“Possibly,” Peggy admitted. “We’d like for it not to be the case, but the longer we can’t find Tony, the more likely it seems that there’s inside interference.”

The Soldier considered their hands clasped together. “I’m not in your system.”

Peggy flushed. “No. Some…select members of SHIELD are aware of your presence, but it’s strictly need to know.”

“In case you had to put me down.” That seemed entirely reasonable to him.

“James…”

He changed the subject. “You didn’t want to ask me.”

“No.” In that she was honest. “I was afraid it was too much.”

He was afraid that it _would_ be too much. But he owed Peggy and he always paid his debts. Even with not knowing anything about himself, he knew that.

This time, it was him who squeezed Peggy’s hand. She looked up at him, tired watery eyes meeting his. He thought it was the first time he’d made eye contact with in a while.

“If they take me again, you need to put me down.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“Hydra. If they capture me again. This time, don’t try to retrieve me.” He reached up gently and caught a tear that was threatening to fall from her eyes on his finger, studying it curiously. He wondered when the last time he had cried was. It must have been a long time ago; Hydra would have definitely burned that instinct out of him when they first found him. “I’d rather have a bullet in my brain,” he tried to explain, “than let them loose on me again.”

“James…”

“Promise me.” It was the one thing he had to be sure of. He couldn’t be a weapon anymore. Not for Hydra, not for anyone. Not even for Peggy.

“I promise,” she vowed solemnly.

He nodded.

“I’ll take the mission.”

Her grip would’ve broken a lesser man’s hand. “Thank you.” She stood abruptly and sped to the door, throwing it open to the two men outside. “Thank you,” she said again.

The Soldier stood up, bracing himself. Ready to comply.


End file.
